By MATHILDE BLIND. Price 1s.
"A subject of our own time fertile in what is pathetic and
awe-inspiring, and free from any taint of the vulgar and
conventional.... Positive subject-matter, the emotion which inheres in
actual life, the very smile and the very tear and heart-pang, are,
after all, precious to poetry, and we have them here. 'The Heather on
Fire' may possibly prove something of a new departure, and one that
was certainly not superfluous.... Even apart from the fascination of
its subject-matter, the poem is developed with spirit and energy, with
a feeling for homely truth of character and treatment, and with a
generally pervasive sense of beauty."--_Athenæum._
"Miss Blind has chosen for her new poem one of those terrible Highland
clearances which stain the history of Scotch landlordism. Though her
tale is a fiction, it is too well founded on fact.... It may be said
generally of the poem that the most difficult scenes are those in
which Miss Blind succeeds best; and on the whole we are inclined to
think that its greatest and most surprising success is the picture of
the poor old soldier, Rory, driven mad by the burning of his
wife."--_Academy._
"A subject which has painfully pre-occupied public opinion is, in the
poem entitled 'The Heather on Fire,' treated with characteristic power
by Miss Blind.... Both as a narrative and descriptive poem, 'The
Heather on Fire' is equally remarkable."--_Morning Post._
"A poem remarkable for beauty of expression and pathos of incidents
will be found in 'The Heather on Fire.' Exquisitely delicate are the
touches with which the progress of this tale of true love is
delineated up to its consummation amid the simple rejoicings of the
neighbourhood; and the flight of years of married life and daily toil,
as numerous as those of their courtship, is told in stanzas full of
music and soul.... This tale is one which, unless we are mistaken, may
so affect public feeling as to be an effectual bar to similar human
clearings in future."--_Leeds Mercury._
"Literature and poetry are never seen at their best save in contact with
actual life. This little book abounds in vivid delineation of character,
and is redolent with the noblest human sympathy."--_Newcastle Daily
Chronicle._
"'The Heather on Fire' is a poem that is rich not only in power and
beauty but in that 'enthusiasm of humanity' which stirs and moves us,
and of which so much contemporary verse is almost painfully
deficient.... Miss Blind is not a mere poetic trifler who considers
that the best poetry is that written by the man who has nothing to say
but can say that nothing gracefully.... We can best describe the kind
of her success by noting the fact that while engaged in the perusal of
her book we do not say, 'What a fine poem!' but 'What a terrible
story!' or more probably still say nothing at all but read on and on
under the spell of a great horror and an overpowering pity. Poetry of
which this can be said needs no other recommendation."--_The
Manchester Examiner and Times._
"A poem recently published in London ('The Heather on Fire; a Tale of
the Highland Clearances') is declared, in one of the articles which
have appeared in the German press on the Scottish Land Question, 'to
be based on terrible truth and undoubted real horrors; giving, in
noblest poetical language and thrilling words, a description which
ought to be a spur of action to thinking statesmen.'"--_North British
Daily Mail._
London: WALTER SCOTT, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.
_PRICE SIXPENCE._
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